American University Honors ePortfolio

Honors Community Meeting: Personal Values Exercise

When faced with the task of organizing 25 values from most to least important, I thought it was going to be easy. Unfortunately, it is a lot harder than it seems. After taking time to think as well as plenty of reorganization, my top five values were: family, obligation, pleasure, innovation, and friendship. Putting certain values at the top were easy, such as family and friendship, but ordering others such as integrity, responsibility and passion, was much harder. I learned that many of the values blend together and some cannot exist without the other.

Before this exercise, I had a sense of what everyone’s morals are, but now I feel as if I have a better understanding of how different we all are. Seeing how some values were important to me but were lower on the list for others showed me that it is okay that everyone’s values differ from each other. I got along perfectly fine with these people before seeing their values and I do not see how this could change that. Just because you do not value something as much as someone else, doesn’t mean you do not value that certain characteristic at all. It is important to this fact and not judge people on what value they placed first and what value they placed last. There is a specific reason why their list is the way it is, and the same goes for my very own list.

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One thought on “Honors Community Meeting: Personal Values Exercise”

I’m glad to hear that this ranking process was difficult for you. Is that weird to say? I think it’s a good thing because it shows just how much potential this activity has for opening the space for critical reflection. Tell me, where did integrity, responsibility, and passion end up on your list?

I had a lot of trouble distinguishing responsibility from obligation–why did you choose obligation to be in your top 5 instead of responsibility? How did you differentiate the two?

If there are no right or wrong answers to the question, “What are your motivational values?” then, what should your particular ranking tell me about you?